


Recover

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Horror, M/M, Psychological Torture, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-23
Updated: 2013-04-23
Packaged: 2017-12-09 06:12:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/770913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're stronger together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recover

**Author's Note:**

> Set after season 8. Originally posted to tumblr, archived here. For serricoj, who prompted: Sam and Dean and Cas with some D/C in it, "You think You're frightening me with Your hell, don't you? You think your hell is worse than mine." --Dorothy Parker
> 
> Warnings for: confinement, references to past torture.

Together, Dean would've thought the three of them could take down one cheap-ass dark fae, but apparently not. The thing grabs Cas first, knocking him down, and before Sam or Dean can move to help, it goes after Sam, the dark green vines sliding around his legs, tightening until he falls. Dean gets his fingers around Cas's bicep, his other hand snagging Sam's collar, trying to haul them both up, when the vines snap-curl painfully around Dean's ankles and he's down too. He loses his grip on them both, but gets his knife free from the sheath at his waist. The vines slither around his legs, his waist, his arms. Dean curses and shouts until the vines are at his neck and he can't manage more than a rasping noise. The vines press the three of them against the cave wall, side by side, the scent of wet leaves and cloying flowers growing stronger until Dean gags and drops the knife.

*

 _It's been a long time, Dean. I always knew you'd return to me one day, like calls to like._ Alastair wraps Dean's fingers gently around the handle of a weapon heavy in Dean's hands, steadying. It's only a tool, he's done this all his life. This is who he is, what he's best at, where he's meant to be no matter the regrets for what he's lost, and it makes the ache less as the blade cuts into the soul on the rack.

Alastair stays close, whispering encouragement in Dean's ear.

*

Sam strains against the vines, catches a glimpse of Dean and Cas struggling to pull themselves free of the cave wall, the knife falling from Dean's hand. Twisting his whole body, Sam works an arm free before the vines rise up thicker than before. They make him think of the silly horror movie Dean snuck them both through the back fence of a drive-in to see when Dean was twelve and Sam was eight. The leaves cover Sam's eyes, the vines tightening viciously in response to Sam's efforts, the smell of flowers intensifying, insidiously beyond sweetness, tumbling into decay. It's not going to end like this, not after he and Dean survived the trials, not after Cas freed himself from Naomi's control, not after everything they've been through and what he promised Dean last year, it wasn't going to end like this. 

*

The cage is cold in that moment, frost dusting the parched ground, in the distance the gold blaze of fire. Sam signals to Adam to stay behind him, and tries to draw attention to himself, he always tries to do that, to get them to leave his half-brother alone. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It works this time, and together the archangels freeze and then burn his flesh, rummage in his mind and play the spots of peace and pain until he can't tell the difference between them.

The worst is when Lucifer is kind to him.

*

Castiel isn't entirely powerless. Some areas of his patchwork grace remain strong, and he surely should've been able to overcome one lone spiteful dark fae. Yet the vines around Castiel's ankles are metal hard, and he hits the floor with a speed that knocks the breath out of him, the glow of his angel turbo, as Dean has taken to calling it, flickering ineffectually in his palms. Sam is next, then Dean, both of them fighting mightily. He gets only a glimpse of them before the vines yank him upwards and slam him hard against the cave wall, sending jolts of pain through his body, this useless shell of bone and blood and skin. It's unacceptable--he should be strong enough, even with things as they are. He isn't letting this creature take the Winchesters. The vines slide around his neck.

*

They spread through his grace like oil poured into a pool of water, rustling and laughing as they tell him all the things they're going to do to violate this planet, this messy, harsh, warm, suffering, kind, exquisite, ugly place Castiel doesn't belong to yet cares for as if he were born there. They tell him what they're going to do to Dean, to Sam, to Bobby. They mock his father for being a weak coward, laugh at Castiel for ever believing in Him, and then for believing in a couple of frail human pets. 

They tell him _you're not that much different than us, you and your self-righteous kind. You'd just prefer to think you are._

He hears a familiar voice, angry and rough, shouting his name, _Cas!_ and the light in his palms flares bright beneath the leaves.

*

Beside the rack a man appears, dark-haired, wearing a t-shirt so faded it was difficult to read the name of the band on it anymore ( _bought it in a thrift store in Lansing two months ago_ ). Dean hesitates at the tug of warm familiarity, holding the blade an inch over the trembling soul. He knows that face. Something's not right. They already did this. Castiel already pulled him out of Hell. 

_This isn't real, Dean,_ Cas says, and vanishes.

*

The vines are still tight around Dean's body, but he wrenches hard against them, turns his head, gets his mouth free of the leaves, and begins to shout.

*

Lucifer and Michael fight, the light and sound something more than two thunderstorms meeting. 

_It's not real._ The voice drowns out the archangels. _Sam, you snap out of it right now, it's a hallucination, it's not real. Sam!_

The cold and heat of the cage, Lucifer and Michael, blink away, leaving only the clammy air of the cave, the vines that imprison him. Sam wriggles his body, getting a hand free.

*

It doesn't take much power to reach out and touch Dean's mind--Castiel's done it many times before, finds it nearly effortless to find that signal, follow that path. Once he's touched Deans nightmare and his memory both, he loses the contact, the whispering darkness swarming over his grace again. But Dean's voice shouting _Cas!_ snaps his consciousness to full clarity again and he resumes his struggle against the vines, this time, singes them, making them loosen and recoil. Castiel tumbles free, falling to his hands and knees. He grabs Dean's knife and gets hastily to his feet, body tingling as the blood starts to flow in a normal fashion through his veins again. He slips the knife into Sam's free hand and slaps one palm onto the vines covering him, the other on the vines covering Dean, no time to bother being gentle. Between the power Castiel scrapes up, and the Winchesters' physical strength, they get free.

"Knew it wasn't real," Dean mutters, stumbling forward, and Castiel catches him, his body warm and real and heavy.


End file.
